I’m trying to do everything I can to save money, not spend it (and I prefer to shop local when I can)â€” but there are a few things I buy online. Whenever I shop online now, I visit ebates.com first and see if the store I’m shopping participates. If they do, I click through to their site from Ebates, which tracks my purchase and then pays me back anywhere from 1-10% or more of my purchase back.

I know, it sounds like one of those “too good to be true” internet scams. I thought so too, but I’ve used Ebates for a little over a year now whenever I shop online, and I’ve managed to “earn back” almost $90 in that time. And after using it for a year, I haven’t had any problems and feel totally comfortable recommending the site. It doesn’t bother me that my purchases are tracked; I sort of assume by now that everything I do on the internet is tracked by somebody.

Most of the purchases I’ve made are through sites like Shutterfly, Sephora and Target.com. When we reserved hotel rooms two different times this year, I clicked through Ebates first. I’m definitely not shopping online more just to take advantage of Ebates, but it’s a nice bonus for the few times I do buy something online. Ebates often lists additional store coupon codes for things like free shipping, too.

Cyber Monday is next week and the holidays are a time when many of us do more online shopping than usual. If you’re not uncomfortable with the idea of your purchases being tracked, and you’d like to earn a percentage of your purchases as cash back, check out Ebates.

And if you do? Well, I’d love it if you used my referral link to sign up, because I’ll get a bonus from Ebates. Happy shopping!

Tip: I use a separate Hotmail account for things like this instead of my regular email account.